Solid state storage cells, including NAND flash memories, are increasingly gaining market share in both enterprise and consumer data storage solutions. They are resilient to shock and their I/O performance is better than that of conventional hard disk drives. A NAND flash memory is divided into many blocks and each block is divided into many pages. A page contains multiple logic block addresses (LBAs), which are the smallest memory unit that can be accessed by the host device.
Unlike dynamic random access memory (DRAM), NAND flash memories incur significant ‘wear’ over use. There exists a need to monitor and guide wear such that NAND flash memory life is extended.